Images are pure work of imagination

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13 April 2012

What the latest images show is an updated version of what we have long been promised: "vibrant" and "thriving" communities, new homes, new jobs, a lush and immaculate Olympic Park at the heart.

They are the latest of the radiant green-and-blue computer images that have been used to sell 2012, which look as different as possible as the grimy places that Stratford and Hackney Wick used to be.

And who could not want new homes, jobs, and perfectly balanced new neighbourhoods? Who could not want a modern version of Regent's Park, with elegant residences?

But the big, not yet quite answered, questions are: where is the money coming from and who is going to build it? The private sector is going to lack will and ability to build at this scale in this unproven location for many more years, even allowing for a possible upturn sometime in the next five years. The images sensibly show the legacy in 2040, sufficiently far in the future to hope that something might by then happen, although this leaves open the question of what might happen on all this empty space in the meanwhile.

The other question is whether the beautiful computer images will translate into equally beautiful architecture. This hasn't happened with the buildings for the games themselves, where the venues, the village and the spaces between, have been ground down into more mundane reality than that suggested by the early images.

It is not encouraging that the Athletes' Village has been bailed out and reduced to its minimum possible size.

We were also promised, with the Athletes' Village, vibrancy and beauty, but we are getting a slightly-above-average housing development.

It is possible that the Mayor and the LDA have answers to these questions, but they are not evident at this moment. Without such answers, today's images are pure works of the imagination.

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